SODEN’S Australia Hotel Motel in Albury is up for sale.
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Licensee Nicholas Wil-loughby confirmed yesterday his family was withdrawing from the business after more than six years.
Albury hotel broker Doug May has invited expressions of interest for the 13.5-year leasehold interest in the hotel.
The freehold, owned by a Sydney investor who also owns the New Albury Hotel, is not for sale.
Nicholas and Dorothy Willoughby took on the lease after businessmen Graeme Boss and Mal Hutchinson had sold Sodens as a “total package”, including the freehold, for $2.275 million in 2000.
Three other family members also work in the business.
“We’ve made it a very successful hotel and doubled the turnover in six years,” Mr Willoughby said.
“We also feel the music has made it an icon with something special.
“It’s a family decision to sell the lease and we’ll be sad to go.”
The family intend to stay in the area and will pursue other business interests.
Sodens has a 24-hour licence, 16 poker machines, five bars and a beer garden, 27 motel rooms and 18 hotel rooms.
Mr and Mrs Willoughby transformed the hotel and highlighted the horse-racing fraternity’s links with the legendary former proprietor, Jimmy Soden, who died in 1944, aged 83.
Several Melbourne Cup and Caulfield Cup winners were stabled there overnight to give them a break from the long and arduous train journey between Sydney and Melbourne.
Sodens began in the 1850s and has been a pub for most of the time since, except for a period when it was a police barracks.
Expressions of interest for the lease close on July 20.
